The Amazing Ways Microsoft Uses AI To Drive Business Success

Microsoft plans AI

The adoption of AI in business and society is encouraged by technology giants with resources to design, build and deploy affordable services and simple enough for daily use. Microsoft is one of those in the vanguard. This year, the words "artificial intelligence" appear for the first time in a vision statement, reaffirming that intelligent and learning machines are considered essential in everything they do.

Although it's all about shouting, Microsoft has developed smart features in many of its products and services for quite some time. If you use Skype, Office 365, Cortana or Bing, you probably know it.

Machine learning - what most people hear at the moment, when using the term AI - helps to equalize research with useful results, and gives the Cortana Virtual Assistant the opportunity to improve and become more useful over time . Thanks to Skype, it allows chatbots to operate on their communication platform, where they can be used for customer services or access services such as weather information or travel information.

In its Office Enterprise Productivity Suite, as well as Cortana's support, Microsoft implemented interface-assisted functionality designed to provide assistance with daily tasks, such as live voice translation of recorded voice.

These are great examples of how specialized AI - designed to perform a single task and be more and more good - is already integrated into our lives. However, Microsoft has noted that its ambition goes further. Work towards the goal of generalized AI intelligent machines that can turn your talents into any task.

Harry Shum, executive vice president of his AI and research group, said: "Today's computers can perform specific tasks very well, but with regard to general tasks, AI can not compete with a human child."

The Research and AI group was founded in 2016 as the fourth engineering division of Microsoft, along with Office, Windows and Cloud teams. In less than a year, it has grown to 8,000 employees. It is safe to say that after losing the last seismic change in the technological landscape - the jump to the mobile - does not want to delay the output block.

Apart from the services it provides to end users, Microsoft's backbone services are available to organizations that want to create their own smart tools. The global framework is known as Microsoft's Platform AI, which includes a series of more specialized packages, such as Microsoft Cognitive Services, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit and Microsoft Bot Framework. This work allows AI algorithms to be used on Azure's powerful and popular cloud computing platform, with users only paying for processing and storage as needed. Eliminating the need for organizations to host their own costly and rapidly aging infrastructure is key to CEO Satya Nadella's vision of "democratizing AI."

The technology giant is also interested in the development of stand-alone vehicle technology. This year, he announced that he is partnering with the leading Chinese search engine Baidu to develop a platform for self-driving cars. These vehicles rely heavily on artificial intelligence to interpret sensor data on board and respond appropriately to driving hazards.

More recently, Microsoft announced a new technology designed to accelerate real-time machine learning algorithms. Known as Project Brainwave, it uses programmable processors known as FPGAs to execute sophisticated and distorted algorithms. Essentially, it is software that can be programmed directly on a programmable chip, allowing the core hardware to function as specialized deep neuronal network processing units. Microsoft is able to capitalize on this because of the investment it has made in installing FPGA in its worldwide data centers over the past few years.

Microsoft also develops industry-specific AI applications. The company has just announced a new division of health based on artificial intelligence in order to develop predictive analytical tools that can alert people about medical problems, help diagnose diseases and recommend the right treatments and interventions.

These projects represent the culmination of a goal declared by the most famous figurehead of society, the founder Bill Gates, in 1991, when he said he believed that computers would see, hear, and learn one day like humans.

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Today, the level of available computing power has reached a threshold where intelligent and self-teaching machines are beginning to become a viable reality. If we imagine the task of creating the AI ​​as if we were Dr. Frankenstein in his lab, our creation might not be on his feet and walk around, but it opened his eyes, and we can see that the lights are on .

Advances such as those made by Microsoft put this kind of technology - and with it, the opportunity to build a better world - at the fingertips of millions of people every day. However, it is still early, and everything is to be gained. If Microsoft continues to leverage its strong technology infrastructure and extensive user base, it can prove to be the winner of the race to establish leaders in the AI ​​.